Stocks rose Wednesday as investors welcomed the end of a terrible year on Wall Street and looked forward to a better year in 2009. For investors, 2008 has been the worst year since the Great Depression of the 1930s. For the year, stocks plunged amid the U.S. housing-market collapse, extremely tight credit, the recession, and weaker consumer spending. Oil prices fell 61 percent, reversing the upward trend of the previous few years, as the global economy slowed. However, analysts are cautiously optimistic that Wall Street will recover in 2009, despite continued stock volatility and the ongoing recession. In the day's economic news, the number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits declined unexpectedly last week, but the number of people continuing to receive jobless benefits surged, reflecting the worst U.S. labor market since 1982. Light sweet crude oil for February delivery rose $5.57 to $44.60 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Prices had been lower ahead of the release of the U.S. government's weekly petroleum inventories report, which showed a surprising rise in crude supplies and a smaller-than-expected increase in gasoline inventories. The U.S. dollar gained versus the euro and the yen. The Dow Jones industrial average rose 108.00, or 1.25 percent, to 8,776.39. The broader Standard & Poor's 500 index rose 12.61, or 1.4 percent, to 903.25. The technology-heavy Nasdaq composite index rose 26.33, or 1.7 percent, to 1,577.03. The New York Stock Exchange composite index rose 87.05 to 5,757.05. The American Stock Exchange composite index rose 24.26 to 1,397.53. And the Russell 2000 index rose 16.68 to 499.45.
